Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Lack of Rapid Transit plan leaves Christchurch vulnerable

Despite attractive new Metro marketing and an impressive new post quake central bus station being built Christchurch continues to blither around in the appalling incompetence which has long marked public transport planning in this city.

Yep - Christchurch still misses the bus, train and everything else!

Any city worth its salt must look at making public transport work effectively, and the core of planning is a "rapid transit plan". This is the technology and land use to attract and move large numbers of commuters quickly from home areas to major employment zones.

Auckland's whole multi-billion public transport system is based around a rapid transit plan put together in 1995. They worked out where they needed to go and a step by step plan to get there. This consisted of four rail corridors (including a de facto loop around the central isthmus) and a segregated busway up the North side of the Harbour. Over the last 20 years Auckland's confident approach has won significant funding at every step, quite a lot coming Canterbury fuel tax dollars.

Likewise Wellington had identified how to upgrade its rapid transit network by the beginning of this century (almost 15 years ago) and identified it needed to upgrade its suburban rail network, including new carriages, stations and trackwork through to the Wairarapa; and double tracking and electrifying the Kapiti Line north as far as Waikane. Again year by year these goals won funding and were achieved. About $700 million of work done, much of it Government funded and also quite a lot of it coming from Canterbury fuel tax dollars .

Christchurch? I've been watching since I purchased my first computer back about 1995 (virtually 20 years) and the only thing even remotely comparable to a mass rapid transit plan I've seen was a plan in 2003 to put part-time, part-way bus lanes on nine routes.

It a minimalist policy which the various city authorities anyway proved incapable of achieving or even getting part done before the incoming National government withdrew (the tiny) funding in 2009. Within six weeks of the Government cutting their cycleway and bus lane funding in Christchurch from $4.5 million to $1,5 million, transport minister Joyce gave a cheque of $88 million to Wellington Regional Council for a second and final payment of the new Matangi electric units! Not a squeak from our insipid leaders!

The aim of mass rapid transit is to create conduits where public transport vehicles do not have to compete with other vehicles.

Another aim is to address longer journeys where these conduits allow for genuinely competitive journey times with private cars, and which address the longer commuting journeys which cause and suffer the greatest pollution and congestion.

Being a keen fan of public transport I have tried for many years to get public authorities in Christchurch to follow best practise concepts, used all over the world, of basing our public transport around a core rapid transit plan. This is like a skeleton around which all other public transport and active transport planning is built. Every single written or spoken submission, or approach to a civic leader or political candidate has been rejected, even when I have merely requested that concepts be investigated.

Once I was told by a very arrogant woman chairing an Ecan committee, patronising words to the effect "Don't you worry [your silly little head?], we are protecting our rapid transit corridors" . It is absurd as the city has never identified its rapid transit corridors!

These do not necessarily follow existing rail or main road corridors, because often the greatest through flow advantage - and the least disruption and political resistance in the building or in operation of such a corridor is precisely away from existing networks. The key is to link major housing, commercial and industrial areas - delivering people to key traffic generators - whilst simultaneously by-passing or minimising interaction with existing congestion.For example it is quite clear that it is not possible to built mass rapid transit on Riccarton Road.

In the first case it is a major (car) traffic corridor, so any significant permanent and full-time tram lines or bus lanes, will further impede normal traffic. In the second place it is lined by shops and clumps of take-way outlets all of which rely upon motorised traffic and will resist bitterly by all owners. Thirdly it is intersected at Clyde Road, and Clarence Road by two very busy complex intersections, where giving buses (travelling several different ways) priority every time - a minimum requirement of rapid transit - is quite out of the question. Fourthly Riccarton Road has a very large rental housing/professional apartment/ university student flatting sector to the south - key transport users - but half of this is out of easy walking bus access, and by contrast correspondingly little by way of bus user catchment to the north side of the road.

How can public transport bring huge numbers of people through Riccarton heading for the city AND also directly to Riccarton (notably Westfield) AND to an effective exchange point to head north and south to Addington etc, without stopping for other traffic?

This is a busway corridor crossing many minor side streets and threading between houses (on a hedged and treed landscaped bus, cycle and pedestrian corridor ) in a way that buses can be given total or very high priority at every intersection crossed, between Mandeville Street and Wharenui Road. This by-passes Riccartion Road congestion but not Riccarton itself - giving best option access to the Mall at Matipo Street and again Rotheram Street (main suburban bus exchange) while directly servicing and helping to grow a huge potential commuter market in the block between Riccarton Road and Blenheim Road.

It requires the purchase of perhaps 15 properties (the line shown here is only indicative) mostly run-down old houses used as student flats which will soon be demolished for apartment blocks. This potential straight through corridor will be almost certainly be lost within the next few years.

A radical suggestion here is to split Middleton Park in two - the football fields there realigned but also given embankments with a shelter trees - and take a tar sealed busway through the middle of these embankments with safe pedestrian crossings included. This allows (a) very deep penetration of an area poorly serviced by immediate public transport (b) linking a future obvious busway under the motorway and under the railway - cut and fill tunnels costing less than $30 million all up - from the south-west via Annex Road to join up at Middleton Road, straight from to Riccarton and city, to be factored in for the future. (c) an exclusive corridor that can later if deemed necessary be converted to light rail - indeed taking straight under the railway line and Deans Avenue and a corner of Hagley Park (the 50 year plan!) .

Instead we have yet again as in 1996, and in 2007, the pathetic farce of pin -in-the-map planning at Riccarton Road as Ecan and the Council and the local retailers and Mall management fight over which in the worst place they can put a bus station!!

And of course with Gerry's jackboot on the throat of Christchurch our fuel taxes are sent to Auckland !

1 comment:

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Port to Plains, Over and Under the Port Hills, the Story of the Lyttelton Railway Tunnel, 204 pages, over 100 images. Can be purchased at most good bookshops. Or Click image to access, sample pages, online sales info

First bus off the rank .... and part of the reason for the rapid rise in Melbourne bus patronage . Recently retired blogster Melbourne&...

WELCOME TO NZ IN TRANZIT

This blog is mostly about public transport and social infrastructure in Christchurch, and transit around New Zealand. Also tracked; transit developments in similar sized cities in Canada and Australia, kindred in demographic patterns, for added perspective and inspiration. NZ in Tranzit blog covers some of the new transit technology and discusses public transport concepts in general, as well. Because the blogster's day-job is in a high profile customer industry to preserve some degree of privacy he appears only as a rabbit in his profile, albeit using his real name.

Christchurch is a city of metropop c 400,000 in Te Wai Pounamu, the southern of the larger islands of NZ. Public transport is operated under the auspices of a regional council with bus operations (and those of one small cross harbour ferry) tendered out to private operators including one owned by the City Council, Redbus. We have a modern clean fleet of buses which offer fairly frequent services to all city areas. The city has been quick to adapt new technologies such as low-floor buses, smart-card (arguably the best in the world!), GPS and Real Time signage and interactive text, and online type information systems. Our busiest route is The Orbiter, a service that circulates around the middle suburbs, and the ring of shopping malls, high schools and the city University about 4-5km from the centre of town

Christchurch also has restored trams operating on a central city circuit. Note [May 2011] - Sadly, due to two huge earthquakes (that took 182 lives) and multiple aftershocks much of the central city of Christchurch will be closed to public access for up to a year to allow the demolition of 900 severely damaged buildings. This includes a great many heritage buildings that previously gave the central city its distinctive character and (such was the exceptional ferocity of the second earthquake in February) even some of the high rises, possibly including those shown in photo above. Tram operations are suspended for at least a year. Many other parts of the city have resumed active life for both residents and tourists..

Locally designed and manufactured Gas-Electric hybrid buses offer a free inner city shuttle. The original Ashburton company Designline was sold to the US and 30 Designline buses are currently being trialled in New York . At a cost per passenger of less than a dollar subsidy and over a million passengers a year this was a very successful operation by any standard, alas suspended because of the closure of Christchurch's centre following the devastating Feb 22 earthquake

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6am November 1 2013 - the stats counter shows New Zealand page views, since the blog began in September 2009 just hit exactly 43,000 - not bad for an obscure blog about public transport, even allowing only a portion of these will be readers in the fullest sense.
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Auckland Commuter Rail Upgrade

Part of the massive makeover of Auckland's long neglected commuter rail network. A DMU from Waitakere in the West entering Newmarket's new multi-level station; buildings immediately above tracks are residential apartments; behind the train a double tracked in all directions triangle will allow increased options for trains entering or leaving Britomart

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Former Christchurch city bus driver and transport historian, author of many letters to newspapers and articles for publications. Has contributed many formal submissions and informal suggestions to city and transit authorities, from Taupo to Texas and, mostly, in hometown Christchurch NZ. A madness spanning 30 years!! Think global - act local....as Normandy in 1944 was won hedgerow by hedgerow so must a sustainable world be built bus stop by bus stop!! .